An interesting critique of the wildly irrational and unrealistic populism of the Tea Party faction of US conservativism, from Republican syndicated columnist and former presidential speechwriter Michael Gerson. Given the unpopularity of the Democrats and the Obama regime, the GOP should be poised to reinstall another Republican regime the White House. But the internal power struggles, fearmongering, insistence on ideological purity, and lack of any reality based alternatives has pretty much left the party a global laughingstock, partly because its loudest, most vocal wings sound like Third World single-party-state campaigners, pledging to save America in the same tone as Idi Amin promised to save Uganda. One friend familiar with international relations describes the GOP and its electile dysfunction as an American Likud increasingly viewed as the out of touch with the rest of the world because it promises all sorts of pie-in-the-sky things designed to appeal to the lowest common local denominator, then ends up catering to ultranationalists and xenophobes and nostalgia for a perfect past that never existed, burning through opportunity like a trustafarian through a plate of cocaine. The Republican Party was founded as an opposition to the worlds oldest political party, the Democratic Party. For much of its history, the party was actually the more liberal centrist party. In the 20th century, conservativism was imported from Europe and slowly grafted onto that identity, slowly displacing both its progressive and moderate wings. But somewhere in the 1970s, something went wrong - certain factions began demanding almost Communist Party levels of conformity to dogma and doctrine. And in the last few years, well, its really getting ugly.
Posted on: Tue, 29 Jul 2014 13:41:07 +0000
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